


Hell Is Empty (All The Devils Are Here)

by em2mb



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Gen, Minor Clint Barton/Natasha Romanov, Rape Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-23
Updated: 2016-10-23
Packaged: 2018-08-24 07:21:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,775
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8362957
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/em2mb/pseuds/em2mb
Summary: It’s two weeks before Maria’s allowed to leave the med bay, two months before she’s cleared for light duty. She’s nowhere near 100 percent, but lying to get back out in the field is a time-honored S.H.I.E.L.D. tradition.
Still, as she sits straight-backed and tells the psychiatric exactly what she wants to hear, Maria wonders if anyone stopped to consider just how many of these evaluations she’s signed off on.A botched mission. A long road back. Maria Hill recovers.





	

**Author's Note:**

> **CONTENT WARNING:** This is a fic about a female character recovering from sexual assault. Please see the author's note at the end for a more detailed description.

Inspired by ["a gift like joy"](http://archiveofourown.org/works/642796) by shellybelle.

“The SHIELD handler manual has a section on  _proper handling of an asset following missions of a sexual nature_. There are two sub-sections, titled  _intentional sexual contact_ , which is a nice way of saying  _how to handle the agent you just whored out_ and  _unintentional sexual contact_ , which is a nice way of saying  _how to handle the agent you didn’t mean to whore out but got sexually assaulted doing your dirty work_.”

* * *

 

Heavy boots strike the ground, but Maria doesn’t bother to lift her head. She’s been lying naked, bound, in the dirt for long enough to know what comes next. She squeezes her eyes shut and waits for her cell door to be thrown open. Maybe she’ll get lucky. Maybe her captors will just be bored, and it’ll be over quickly.

Only Maria’s luck had run out days earlier when guerrillas stormed the safe house in Bogotá. A key turns in the lock. She shivers. The involuntary shudder sends white-hot pain searing up her hips and back. Any moment now.

 _“¿Qué estás haciendo?”_ her jailor demands angrily.

There’s a burst of gunfire. _“¿Donde esta ella?”_ someone shouts in accented Spanish. American, if she had to guess.

But Maria keeps her eyes closed. _S.H.I.E.L.D. doesn’t negotiate,_ she reminds herself. _Help isn’t coming._

More yelling. A grunt of pain. _“¡Vete a la mierda!”_

_“¿Donde esta ella?”_

_“¡Puta!”_ the rebel declares. He’d spat the same ugly word at her as he’d rained down blows with the butt of his machine gun, screaming for her to open her legs. _“Ella se mató.”_

Except she isn’t dead. She opens the eye that isn’t swollen shut in time to see the guard tumble backward into the cell, his neck broken. A pair of S.H.I.E.L.D.-issue combat boots step over the body.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” says a familiar voice, and Rumlow chuckles as he crouches next to her. “Didn’t think we’d find you alive, Hill. Guess I owe Rollins twenty bucks.” The blade of his knife slips between Maria’s bound hands, and the blood-stained rope falls away. “C’mon, get up.”

Maria doesn’t move.

“I’m not carrying you to the extraction point, Hill,” Rumlow says irritably.

_Medevac. You need medevac. Tell him your pelvis is broken._

Rumlow nudges her with his steel-toed boots. Tears well in Maria’s eyes. “I mean it, Hill. Get up.”

“I can’t,” she whispers.

“Jesus Christ,” Rumlow mutters, and he’s no gentler than the rebels, tugging her limp arm over his shoulder. Maria has to bite her split lip to keep from crying out as he half-drags, half-carries her to the waiting Osprey. He deposits her unceremoniously in back, yelling for the pilot to take the fuck off. The aircraft thrums between powerful dual rotors. Someone throws a blanket over Maria. The gunfire is distant.

Just like that, the nightmare’s over. She survived.

*

When Maria wakes up in the S.H.I.E.L.D. med bay however many days later, the first thing she does is take stock of her injuries. Her right eye is no longer swollen shut, though her dislocated left shoulder has been immobilized in a sling. Bandages wrap her ribs. It hurts to breathe.

But from the waist down, she can’t feel a thing.

 _No,_ Maria thinks desperately, _no, it can’t be, it was just a broken pelvis, I can’t be paralyzed, I –_

She isn’t. Just before the panic sets in, she notices a pink tag with “EPIDURAL CATHETER” in block letters sticking out from the neck of her hospital gown. She sighs in relief. Just analgesic, then. She can live with that. She leans back against the pillows and tries to figure out how long she’s been out of it. A day? A week?

Maria shudders. She hopes not a week. She’d lost enough time in the rebel prison, slipping in and out of consciousness, unable to account for hours between beatings. She sees movement out of the corner of her eye. She almost snorts. Some spy she is. She’d thought she was alone. No wonder the guerillas had been able to pluck her from the safe house.

Her visitor clears his throat. It’s a bad sign, Maria thinks, that the director of S.H.I.E.L.D. is at her bedside.

“Agent Hill,” says Fury, “it’s good to have you back.”

*

It’s two weeks before Maria’s allowed to leave the med bay, two months before she’s cleared for light duty. She’s nowhere near 100 percent, but lying to get back out in the field is a time-honored S.H.I.E.L.D. tradition.

Still, as she sits straight-backed and tells the psychiatric exactly what she wants to hear, Maria wonders if anyone stopped to consider just how many of these evaluations _she’s_ signed off on.

*

In hindsight, she probably shouldn’t have accused Fury of dragging his feet on reassigning her.

 _“Barton?”_ Maria hisses, barging into the director’s office. _“Barton?”_

“You’re the one who told me to put you on a mission,” Fury says evenly, eyebrow lifted, though he doesn’t ask how she managed to bypass security. “Demanded it, even.”

Maria squares her shoulders, ignoring the dull ache in her pelvis. “But Barton?”

“Barton’s a capable field agent,” Fury says, swinging his legs down off his desk. “You’ll be in good hands, Hill.”

That’s not what she meant. “Sir – ”

“Be glad it’s not Rumlow,” Fury booms. _“Dismissed.”_

*

They’re somewhere over the Atlantic before Maria thinks to ask about Barton’s Soviet assassin girlfriend, who’d taken a bullet in Odessa a few weeks earlier. “How’s Romanoff?” she shouts, but the engines drown out her words. She doesn’t think Barton’s heard her until he slowly nods.

“On the mend,” he hollers across the cargo hold.

Maria snorts. Leave it to Fury to send her back out with a partner whose head isn’t in the game. _Because that won’t get us killed,_ she thinks irritably. She winces as the C-17 Globemaster hits turbulence, rattling her painfully in her seat.

Only Barton’s not quite as distracted as she thought because he yells, “You OK?”

“Fine,” Maria snaps, but when she disembarks the plane at al-Dumayr, it’s on unsteady legs, her pelvis throbbing with every step.

*

It’s after midnight when they check into single-star accommodations near the old city. The lobby reeks of tobacco smoke. A yellow page torn from a Lonely Planet guidebook hangs crooked on the wall. The innkeeper must recognize Barton because he asks in Arabic where the redhead is. Barton shrugs, universally understood as sorry-I-don’t-understand-your-language, and pays the weekly rate in cash.

“Thanks, Abdul,” he says, stuffing a wad of 500-pound notes into his back pocket. Maria arches an eyebrow. Barton doesn’t offer an explanation, but he doesn’t look surprised when their room only has one bed, either. He drops his bag on the floor. “You take it,” he calls, crossing to the window, which he unlatches with an open-palmed smack.

Maria watches as he checks the sight lines and mimics drawing his bow. Her grip slackens on her own pack, but she isn’t ready to let go just yet. “Come here often?” she asks, the sarcasm she usually manages to bite back at work creeping into her voice. In her defense, it’s late, and she’s tired.

“Spent a couple of weeks here in the spring of ’07 – ” _oh seven_ is how he says it “ – preparing for Speaker Pelosi’s visit. Didn’t think Abdul would remember me.”

Maria doesn’t remember Barton drawing that mission. In fact, she’s pretty sure it was assigned to Romanoff. “You must’ve made quite the impression,” she deadpans.

“Must’ve,” Barton echoes, pounding the latch with his fist to close it. He eyes the 40 pounds of gear still strapped to her back. “Abdul isn’t going to blow our cover,” he says firmly. “Corner us and demand we have a cup of tea with him, maybe. But he won’t compromise the mission. I’m telling you, this place is as safe as any S.H.I.E.L.D. hidey-hole.”

Maria tenses. Not that she was really operating under the illusion he didn’t know what happened in Colombia. She’d just been ... hoping he was too preoccupied with Romanoff to care about the whispers that abruptly stop whenever she walks into the cafeteria.

Barton backpedals immediately. “I’m sorry,” he says. “That was really fucking insensitive, wasn’t it?”

“Save your pity,” she says coolly, sliding her pack from her shoulders. She ignores the scream of protest from her weary body and tells him, “You take the bed. I’ll take first watch.”

*

Maria doesn’t mean to nod off, but when she does, she dreams of Bogotá and broken promises, of safe houses that weren’t so safe. She startles awake, blinking rapidly. The lights of Damascus blink back. Remembering where she is, Maria whips her head around to check on Barton, who’s snoring softly. She isn’t sure how. She would never trust an agent she hadn’t worked with before not to kill her in her sleep.

Then again, Barton had presented the Black Widow to Fury like a third grader bringing in his pet tarantula for show-and-tell.

Maria limps into the bathroom and splashes tepid water on her face. “Pull it together, Hill,” she mutters, carefully avoiding her reflection in the broken mirror. She’s not ready to face the pale, gaunt-faced woman she knows will stare back.

*

The mission is supposed to be strictly recon. Keep tabs on Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator while he meets with Syrian officials. But then a bomb goes off near the Shia shrine in Sayyida Zeinab.

Maria isn’t sure if the three men are al-Qaeda, Mossad, VEVAK or just opposing factions within the Syrian General Intelligence Directorate, only that they’re trying to kill her. Outnumbered, out of practice, she knows the second before the knife pierces the ripstop fabric she’s made a fatal mistake. Warm blood gushes from the wound, not that she has any choice but to keep fighting, punching, kicking. Already, she’s feeling light-headed.

“A little help here, Barton?” she hisses.

The words are no sooner spoken than an arrow lodges into her assailant’s eye socket. With deadly efficiency, the archer fells two more, swinging down from the rafters just as Maria’s knees start to buckle. He catches her under the armpits.

“I’ll call for extraction,” he says.  

Maria’s entire body seizes up. _“No,”_ she insists, and she worms away from him, clinging to a nearby railing for support.

“No?” Barton says quizzically, but he doesn’t try to grab her again. His eyes widen as she wraps her hand around the hilt. “Don’t – ”

Too late. Maria’s already yanked the knife out. She fumbles for her S.H.I.E.L.D.-issue tourniquet as blood spurts from the jagged wound.

Barton knocks her bloodstained hands away, cursing as he applies torsion. “Are you – out of – your _goddamned_ mind?” he pants, hand still pressed her injured thigh.

“No extraction,” Maria says shakily. She wants to throw up, and not because of the blood loss. “Just get me back to the hotel, will you?”

Barton rolls his eyes, but instead of going for his comms piece, he hooks an arm around her waist. “OK, but you’re leaning on me. On three. One – two – ”

*

She’s not going to be able to stitch herself up. The angle’s wrong, the wound’s too deep, and her hands, which haven’t stopped trembling since she closed the bathroom door in Barton’s face, can’t thread the needle. _Focus, Maria._

Barton knocks again. “C’mon, Hill,” he calls. “You’ve made your point. I get it, you can take care of yourself. Except you can’t this time. Now open the damn door, will you?”

Maria squeezes her eyes shut, remembering how the FARC rebels had pounded on the door on the safe house in Bogotá before breaking in and dragging her out. “I’ve got this,” she yells, even as her hands slip for the umpteenth time. She doesn’t have this.

“Fine,” Barton snaps, “but it’s your funeral.” The box spring whines as he flops onto the old bed.

How many times had Maria wished for death in the jungle? Three days had felt like three weeks, three months, three years. For a split-second, she considers running a tub of warm water. She’d bleed out much faster, but before Barton got suspicious and broke down the door? Probably not. Maria chokes back a sob. She doesn’t want to die in a bathtub in Damascus anymore than she’d wanted to die in the rebel stronghold of Caquetá.

“Clint?” she croaks.

The lock barely slows him down. “Hey,” he says, crouching in front of her on the chipped tile floor. At some point, he’d changed out of his tac suit into sweatpants and a faded t-shirt with the S.H.I.E.L.D. insignia. “Can I take a look?”

Though every fiber of her being is screaming no, Maria nods. She blinks back tears and waits for him to touch her.

Except Barton doesn’t. “Was that a yes? Because it’s not too late to call for medevac.”

Maria shakes her head. “No extraction,” she whispers. If S.H.I.E.L.D. medical gets wind of this, there’s no telling when she’ll be allowed back out in the field. She grips the edge of the tub and slowly spreads her knees. “Here.”

“Let me know if anything I do makes you uncomfortable,” says Barton, only he doesn’t sound like Barton, the carnie with an eighth grade education who’d once brought home a stray he was sent to kill. His touch is surprisingly gentle, too, callused fingers brushing her knee as he inspects the deep gash on the underside of her thigh.

Maria still shudders.

“Reminds me of the hit I took in Tbilisi last year,” Barton says conversationally while scrubbing his hands.

Maria arches an eyebrow, watching him thread the needle with the all the dexterity she’d expect of someone who fletches his own arrows. “That mission in South Ossetia?” Barton nods. “Didn’t I sign off on that?” Stab wounds generate significant paperwork, only Maria doesn’t recall getting a hand cramp. She does, however, remember Barton limping around HQ for weeks after.

“Must not’ve made the mission report,” he says, settling onto the closed toilet lid across from her. “Nat stitched me up, and I’m going to do the same for you.”

It’s odd to hear the most dangerous woman in the world referred to as “Nat” when everyone else at S.H.I.E.L.D. calls her the Black Widow. “And what did Agent Romanoff want in return?”

Barton smiles crookedly. “For me not to bleed out. Hey, uh, you know this is going to hurt, right?”

Maria has, of course, survived worse. “I kind of figured as much, Barton.” She bites her lip.

Barton shakes his head. “Nope,” he says. “You’ll bite right through if you do that. Breathe for me. In through your nose, out through your mouth. There you go. Ready?”

It’s not the first time Maria’s needed stitches in the field, not that it makes the process any more pleasant. _“Sonofabitch,”_ she swears as Barton plunges the needle into her thigh. Eyes watering, she feels a little tug as he ties the stitch off.

He waits until he has a neat little row going before asking, “Do you know what I was doing when S.H.I.E.L.D. recruited me?”

Maria’s pretty sure everyone knows he was once a sideshow attraction, the Amazing Hawkeye. But she could really use a distraction right now, so she plays along. “Weren’t you in the circus?”

“The Carson Carnival of Traveling Wonders,” Barton mutters. His Adam’s apple bobs. “No, after that.”

Maria frowns. “Coulson didn’t recruit you straight from the big top?”

“Unfortunately, no.” Barton’s tongue flicks over his lips. “One of my aids fell out during a show, got trampled by an elephant.”

“You’re lying,” says Maria, immediately suspicious.

His eyes are so _blue._ “About the elephant, maybe. But I assure you, I’m not lying when I say old man Carson didn’t have much use for a deaf roustabout. The circus left me with 17 bucks and a quiver of arrows.”

Maria’s stomach turns. “What’d you do?” she asks, even though she’s pretty sure she knows the answer already.

“What I had to to get by,” he says, and he shrugs. “I told myself it was consensual, but half the time it wasn’t. You’d agree to one thing, they’d want something else entirely, and once you went with them to some seedy rent-by-the-hour motel, you weren’t really in a position to say no.”

Her chest tightens as she remembers the cell where they’d kept her in Colombia. By the time S.H.I.E.L.D. mounted a rescue, Maria had stopped opening her eyes when the door clattered open. “Why are you telling me this?”

“Because,” says Barton thoughtfully, “I know it’s different, what happened to you, and I’m not trying to compare apples to oranges, but – you’re going to be OK, Maria. It doesn’t feel like it now, it might not feel like it next week or next month or even next year, but one day you won’t wake up hating yourself. You did what you had to do to survive. There’s no shame in that.”

He helps her into a pair of clean sweatpants – his – before triple-checking the door and all of the windows, though Maria’s certain the first thing he did when they got back to the motel was secure the exits. She hobbles to the bed. He takes a seat in the chair in the corner of the room.

She drifts into a fitful sleep.

*

He’s still sitting in the chair when she wakes up the next morning.

“Jesus Christ, Barton,” Maria mutters, throwing back the covers, “were you watching me sleep?” She remembers a second too late that a thin piece of surgical thread is the only thing keeping her thigh from gaping open and puts too much weight on her right leg.

Maria would be stiff and sore if she’d slept upright in a chair, but Barton manages to spring to his feet and cross the room with a cat-like grace. He doesn’t grab her, but he does hover, and finally she grips his bicep to steady herself.

“Thanks,” she says begrudgingly.

“Don’t mention it.” He helps her limp to the bathroom. “Extraction at 0800 hours.”

Maria glares at him. “I thought we agreed, no extraction.”

“Wasn’t my call, Hill. Coulson wants us out. Before word gets ’round that S.H.I.E.L.D. was ever here.”

She’s still holding onto his arm. “When’d he call?”

“About an hour ago.” Barton pauses. “Hey, uh, you should know, I had to tell Coulson you took a hit. I didn’t say how bad, but he wanted to send a chopper ... ” he trails off mumbling something about Special Patrol Insertion/Extraction. He’s right, of course. Dangling out of a helicopter with her injuries isn’t advisable.

It still feels like a betrayal. “That’s fine,” she lies, closing the bathroom door in Barton’s face and slumping against it. It’s not fine, it’s so far from fine, it’s –

Maria collapses.

*

When Maria comes to, she’s already strapped to a backboard, Coulson shouting orders between muttered _goddammits._ “What the hell were you thinking?” he demands, and it takes her a second to realize he’s yelling not at her but at Barton.

His craggy features swim into focus. “Sorry about the restraints,” Barton says quietly and Maria feels sick when she realizes a S.H.I.E.L.D. medic is in the process of cutting away the borrowed sweatpants. “Do you remember passing out?”

She’s immobilized, can’t nod. “Yes,” she says hoarsely. Maria squeezes her eyes shut as rough hands manipulate her thigh to get a better look at the day-old wound.

“Stitches seem to be holding,” the medic announces, returning Maria’s leg to the backboard. Yet another strap tightens across her knees. “Let’s get her on the quinjet, push fluids.”

Only Barton seems to notice she’s dangerously close to hyperventilating. “Agent Hill,” he says. _“Maria.”_

His voice is steady. Reassuring, even. Maria takes a breath. And another. And another.

*

She doesn’t believe Barton when he says he’ll see to it that the restraints are removed as soon as the quinjet takes off, but her hands are no longer bound when she wakes up somewhere over the North Atlantic several hours later. A thin blanket covers her from the waist down; the IV line taped to her forearm delivers a steady stream of blood and painkillers, if the fuzzy feeling Maria’s fighting is any indication.

“You know,” says Coulson from the jump seat, “I expect this from Barton. But you, Agent Hill?” He uncrosses his legs and pushes up on his knees. “You’re better than this.”

He disappears into the cockpit.

*

The next time Maria regains consciousness, it’s in the S.H.I.E.L.D. med bay, mint green walls and antiseptic smell. The bag of blood products has been replaced with a saline drip, and if the pain in her leg is any indication, she’s no longer getting the good drugs. She guesses she’s lost hours this time, not days, but she wants to account for every minute since leaving Damascus.

There’s a knock on the door. “Good,” says Dr. Cho, “you’re awake.” She grabs Maria’s chart and circles her patient’s bed. “How’s your pain?”

“Three,” Maria lies.

“What about when I do this?” Dr. Cho peels back the coverlet and thumps on Maria’s abdomen. It’s been three months since she wired Maria’s fractured pelvis back together, but _fuck,_ it hurts.

Maria grits her teeth. “Four,” she concedes, but that’s it. She’s not going any higher. Let Dr. Cho poke and prod all she wants.

The doctor clucks her tongue. “Agent Hill, it’s concerning to me that you were back in the field a mere twelve weeks after I repaired your acetabulum. That’s hardly what we – ”

“How long,” Maria interrupts, “do you plan to bench me this time?”

Six months. That’s how long Dr. Cho had wanted Maria to sit out after Colombia. It was never an option. The doctor purses her thin lips. “I’d like to take some x-rays before I make that call.”

“A week?” Maria presses. “Two?” Her heart begins to hammer. She’ll have to take a field re-cert if Dr. Cho doesn’t clear her within ten days, and Maria almost hadn’t passed the last one.

But Dr. Cho won’t commit to any sort of a timeline. “Let’s get you better, Agent Hill,” she says, and she’s gone.

*

Barton swings by on the third day of Maria’s confinement. He’s wearing tactical gear, quiver strapped to his back, and she honestly can’t tell if he’s coming or going. “Come in,” she says glumly when he raps on the open door.

Barton hangs in the doorway. “Headed to Baghdad,” he says, fiddling with the strap of his bag. _Going, then._ “I’m sorry I didn’t come by sooner.”

“I’ve been out of the loop,” says Maria, which is an understatement. Forget fieldwork, Dr. Cho won’t even release her from the med bay. “What’s in Iraq?”

“Terrorist?” Barton guesses. But Maria knows he has the dossier of whomever he’s being sent to kill memorized and his devil-may-care attitude is a carefully rehearsed act. “Mind if I sit?”

“Be my guest.” Her eyes follow him to the chair at her bedside. They’re not friends. Yet here he is, the first visitor she’s had besides Coulson, which hardly counts because he’d only swung by for the debrief.

“I wanted to apologize,” Barton says once he’s seated.

“For what?”

“You were pretty adamant about not calling for evacuation, Agent Hill.”

“I don’t think I left you much choice, Agent Barton.” Maria still hasn’t come to terms with the fact she almost died. She closes her eyes and doesn’t open them until Barton leaves.

*

Baghdad’s a shitshow. A Super Cobra gets shot down, S.H.I.E.L.D. “misplaces” an entire team, and tales of Barton’s heroics make it back to the med bay before he does. He drops his gear in the doorway and takes a seat at Maria’s bedside. “How’re you feeling?” he asks, sporting all the hallmarks of a broken nose.

Not that she’d ever admit it, but Maria’s in considerable pain, having finally consented to another operation to fix her fucked-up pelvis. “I think that’s supposed to be my line,” she rasps. She hasn’t been asked a question in days that couldn’t be answered with _yes, no_ or a number.

Barton runs a thumb over his split lip and winces. “Coulson said you had surgery yesterday. Do you need anything?”

Maria starts to shake her head, then stops. “Actually, if you wanted to tell me about Baghdad – ” she trails off when he rises to his feet. “I’m sorry. That was probably insensitive. It’s just – ”

“No,” Barton interrupts, “you’re desperate for news from the outside world, I get it. But – hold on for a minute, will you?” He tracks dirt and sand out of her room, returning as promised with a cup of ice chips. “Here,” he says, lowering himself back into the chair. “So Baghdad ... ”

*

Barton stops by most days after that. He brings Maria skinny lattes from Starbucks and gossip, some of which seems to come directly from the ductwork in Fury’s office. “Is the director aware you’ve mapped out every ventilation shaft in this building?” she asks one afternoon as a major winter storm blankets D.C. in snow.

“Coulson is,” says Barton. “I bet him I could go from the fifth floor briefing room to anywhere in the Triskelion without being seen.” He grins. “Going to rat me out, Hill?”

Not today she isn’t. Maria squints at the cards she’s holding, but the suits all bleed together. “Am I looking for sevens or nines?”

“I think that’s enough Go Fish for one day,” Barton says, gently taking the cards from her and easing off his perch at the foot of her bed. “You should get some rest.”

Maria sighs. “I don’t need rest,” she complains. “I need Dr. Cho to release me.”

There’s something unsettling about Barton’s pale gaze. “You’re awfully eager to get back to an empty apartment in Tribeca. Did you leave a carton of milk in the fridge or something?”

Maria glares at him. “You know I’m going stir crazy in here.” Her only regular interaction is with the S.H.I.E.L.D. physical therapists, who force her to tromp up and down the hall three times a day clutching a walker. It’s humiliating how many times her hospital gown has gotten bunched up in her underwear. “Besides,” she says sourly, “we both know you’re only here because Romanoff hasn’t passed her re-cert. But she’s close, isn’t she? Strike Team Delta, reunited at – ”

“She passed yesterday,” Barton interrupts. He scratches his still-bandaged nose and mumbles, “Did I not tell you?”

“Let me guess,” Maria says flatly. “You leave tomorrow for Kyrgyzstan or Kazakhstan or one of the other countries with borders only the Black Widow can penetrate.”

“Turkmenistan,” says Barton, “and we leave tonight.”

*

Turns out, Maria _did_ leave a carton of milk in the fridge. She spends New Year’s Eve hobbling around her kitchen on crutches, cleaning up putrefied dairy. At a quarter to midnight, she tosses a wad of wet paper towels into the garbage and drops, exhausted, into the nearest chair. In a minute, she’ll get up, pour herself a glass of champagne, ring in the new year. In a minute. Maria yawns.

She’s no sooner drifted off than her upstairs neighbors begin counting loudly down to midnight. Their stomping shakes the ceiling, the walls, her cage.

“Ten! Nine! Eight!”

Where is she?

“Seven! Six!”

_Not the jungle, please not the jungle ..._

“Five! Four!”

The guerillas. They’re coming.

“Three! Two! One! Happy New Year!”

Maria startles awake.

*

“You’re pulling your punches,” Maria accuses, and she smacks Barton’s hand away. She might be flat on her back at the S.H.I.E.L.D. practice gym in SoHo, but she can pick herself up off the mat, thank you very much.

Barton, who’d come back from the Karakum Desert with a shiny new burn on his bicep and Thai takeout, hasn’t even broken a sweat. “Yeah?” he says. “Prove it.”

Maria rolls her eyes. They’ve been doing this dance for weeks now, slotting in training sessions between his missions with Romanoff and her check-ins with Dr. Cho. It’s not that Maria doesn’t appreciate his help. It’s that she’ll never get back into fighting shape if Barton refuses to land so much as a punch. “And how do you suggest I do that?”

“Hit me,” he says. “Hard as you can.”

“Oh, come on,” Maria complains. She’s starting to want to hit him, mostly because it’s so obvious to anyone who’s seen them sparring what he’s doing. She doesn’t need him to make her look weak in front of other agents. Not when she’s doing a perfectly fine job herself.

“I’m serious. Take me to the mat, Hill.” He wiggles an eyebrow. “If you can.”

 _Jerk._ Maria takes a deep breath, determined to wipe the smug smile off his face by sweeping his feet right out from under him.

Only it doesn’t quite happen like that. Maria manages to land a single kick, just below his ribcage. Barton catches her foot and uses her momentum to send her spiraling to the mat.

“You’ll have to do better than that,” he taunts.

But Maria stays down, tears springing to her eyes. It’s not the pain, though that’s excruciating. It’s realizing _just how much_ Barton’s been holding back. She tries batting his hand away.

He doesn’t let her. “Take it, Maria,” he says firmly.

*

It’s not until she’s remanded to D.C. for overnight observation that Maria realizes how much she’s missed HQ. Even early in the morning – she’d caught the first commuter flight from LaGuardia – the Triskelion hums with activity. She watches, a bit wistful, as a quinjet takes off over the Potomac.

 _Soon,_ Maria tells herself, shuffling off to the med bay.

“Breathe, Agent Hill,” Dr. Cho reminds Maria in the middle of a highly invasive pelvic exam. “Any pain when I do that?”

“No,” Maria grits, every muscle in her body taut, but she isn’t lying. It doesn’t hurt.

Dr. Cho slides out the speculum and tosses it in the sink. She taps Maria’s knee. “You can relax, Agent Hill. I’m done.”

Maria smooths the thin paper gown over her lap and watches Dr. Cho peel off her gloves. “Well?”

“Well,” says Dr. Cho, “I’d like to have the rest of your test results in hand before I clear you for light duty, but at this point I see no reason why you can’t resume otherwise normal activities.”

Maria stares at the doctor. “I’m a Level 6 agent, Dr. Cho. My normal is jumping out of helicopters and rappelling down buildings.”

Dr. Cho looks up from her patient’s chart. “I’m not talking about work, Maria,” she says gently, and she clears her throat. “Though, until you get your six-month blood work back, you should use condoms alongside your usual method of birth control.”

 _Sex._ _She was talking about sex._ Humiliated, Maria pulls her clothes back on.

Maria expects to spend the whole day in the med bay, getting poked and prodded by S.H.I.E.L.D. doctors, but she’s released on her own recognizance with orders to report back at 1800 hours for tests to see how her body’s responding to an experimental gene therapy.

Maria doesn’t go looking for Barton, but she finds him anyway, sparring with Coulson in one of the smaller training gyms. Maria frowns. She hasn’t seen Barton since that afternoon in SoHo, and the last she heard, he was in Eastern Europe with Romanoff and wouldn’t be back for at least a month. She’s wondering why he was pulled out of Slovenia when she notices the plaster cast on Barton’s left forearm. She doubts S.H.I.E.L.D. has much use for an archer with a broken wrist.

Not that it seems to be slowing Barton down much, if at all. Maria watches, fascinated, from the mezzanine as he takes Coulson down one-handed.

“Well, that was embarrassing,” she hears Coulson say. But she misses Barton’s pithy response because the door behind her creaks open. Maria whirls around.

“Hill,” says Rumlow, dressed for a run. “Didn’t realize you still worked for us.”

“Rumlow,” Maria says coolly. She hasn’t forgotten how he laughed when he found her naked and shivering on the dirt floor of the rebel prison. She walks toward the door.

He steps in front of her. “This gym is for field agents.”

“I’m a field agent,” Maria says irritably. “Move, Rumlow.” She pushes past him.

“You really think you’re going back out in the field?” he calls after her. “You think anyone will want you on their team after what happened in Colombia? No one takes an agent that’s going to be a liability. You fucked up, Hill, and my guys had to put their lives on the line to rescue your ass. You wouldn’t have gotten a second chance if I’d had any say in the matter. But you did, and you know what? You fucked that up, too.”

*

Barton drops into the chair next to her, still dressed in workout clothes. “Whatever you’re doing, Maria, you need to stop.”

Maria ignores him. “Access mission report,” she grits, “Bogotá, September 3, 2009. Hill, Maria.”

“Access denied,” comes the curt reply.

“Search all mission reports. Caquetá Department, September 2009.”

“All files sealed.”

“On whose authority?” Maria asks irritably.

The S.H.I.E.L.D. computer systems calls up a photo of the director. “Fury, Nicholas J.”

“Access personnel file. Hill, Maria.”

“Security clearance not high enough. Director override required.”

“Oh come on!” Maria bursts. “I _am_ Hill, Maria!”

“Access denied.”

Barton leans forward on his elbows, the cast dangling between his spread knees. “Are you done?” he asks quietly.

Maria shakes her head. “I need to know,” she insists.

Barton shakes his head. “You lived it, Maria. You already know.”

“I need to know – ” her voice cracks “ – what made it into the mission report.”

“Why? Fury sealed it for a reason, Maria. What good could possibly come from  – ”

“Stop it,” she interrupts.

Barton blinks. “Stop what?”

“Saying my name like we’re friends.”

*

Barton barges in three days later with a sack from the downstairs bodega. “Here,” he says.

Maria sets down the glass of wine she’d been nursing when his knock scared the bejesus out of her. “Did you – did you buy me groceries?” she asks, watching with morbid fascination as Barton pulls out cheese, grapes, bread and begins restocking her empty fridge. That’s when Maria sees the manila file folder. “Is that – ”

“Yep,” says Barton, wrenching the cork from a half-drunk bottle of sauvignon blanc that’s been in there for weeks and pouring it down the sink.

“How did – ”

“You don’t want to know.”

“Did you – ”

“Read it?” Barton interrupts. “No, I didn’t.” The garbage disposal whirs, grinding down the pit of a rotten peach. “You shouldn’t, either.”

Maria snatches the file from the counter. “How would you know if you didn’t read it?” she retorts. She takes a seat at the tiny table and opens the file, tuning out Barton as he rifles through her kitchen cabinets.

Everything on the top sheet she already knows. June, Colombia agrees to let American troops use its military bases to combat drug trafficking. July, the Colombian government accuses Caracas of supplying arms to FARC rebels. August, Venezuela withdraws its ambassador from Bogotá and freezes relations in protest. That’s when S.H.I.E.L.D. had gotten involved. Maria’s mission had been to determine if President Chavez’s claim that Colombia carried out a military incursion into Venezuela had any merit.

Only she’d been abducted from the safe house in Bogotá before she could meet with any of her contacts.

Barton was right about her already knowing most of what’s in the file, and the rest of it is about what Maria expects. Minutes from a meeting of the World Security Council. Time-stamped logs of Fury’s conversations. Rarely is Maria referred to by name. No, she’s “Level 6 asset missing, presumed dead.”

She forces herself to read every word. The long list of injuries with Dr. Cho’s signature at the bottom. The complaint Rumlow lodged. Fury’s two-sentence memo dismissing it. Barton drops off a plate of spaghetti, but she doesn’t eat. The noodles are cold by the time Maria gets to the photos. She has only vague memories of Dr. Cho taking them, but it’s all there, every fingertip-shaped bruise documented. Maria stares at her battered body and covers her mouth. No wonder Fury had the entire mission report deep-sixed.

Barton reaches across the table and closes the folder. “Enough, Agent Hill,” he says, scooting his chair back. Defiantly, she flips the file open again. “I said, that’s enough.” He yanks it away from her.

“Give it back.”

“No.”

“I need to – ”

“You need to what?” Barton interjects. “Relive it?”

“ – know what happened,” she chokes.

Barton rises from his seat. “You want to know what happened?” he asks. Maria nods. “You were kidnapped by FARC rebels. You were held for three days. They tortured you. They raped you. Is that what you’re looking for? It is, isn’t it? But you’re not going to find that word anywhere in that file. You know why?” Maria shakes her head. “Because it’s much easier to blame you, the victim, than acknowledge that S.H.I.E.L.D. fucked up. Which they did. Don’t you forget that. You should be safe in a safe house, and you weren’t.”

“I shouldn’t have let my guard down,” Maria whispers. “I shouldn’t – ”

“Nope,” says Barton. “Not on you. Blame Fury, blame Gonzales, blame Hand, blame the rebels who broke the door down. But don’t blame yourself, Hill, because you didn’t do anything wrong.”

Maria’s shoulders shake. “I didn’t fight back.”

“Like hell you didn’t. You’re one woman. You’re good, but no one’s that good. Listen to me. It wasn’t your fault. You got sexually assaulted doing S.H.I.E.L.D.’s dirty work, and since no one else is willing to, let me be the one to apologize. I’m sorry, Maria. I’m so fucking sorry. Sorry it happened, and sorry no one’s giving you the help you need.”

“That’s not true,” she sniffs. “You’re trying.”

Barton rakes a hand through his hair. “If you want me to go away, I will,” he mumbles.

Maria takes a deep, shuddering breath. “I don’t want you to go away. Actually, would you stay? I can’t remember the last time someone cooked for me that didn’t work in the S.H.I.E.L.D. cafeteria. I just opened a bottle of wine. I don’t know, we could watch a movie? Or something,” she finishes quickly.

To her surprise, Barton agrees. “OK,” he says, “OK, just let me heat this up for you. No, I’ve got it. Go find something to watch.”

Maria has wine glasses, but she lets Barton pours himself a mug of Jordan Cabernet. It’s not until he’s walking toward her, steaming plate of pasta balanced on his fraying cast, that Maria realizes she’s taken her usual seat in the middle of the couch.

“Mind if I sit next to you?” Barton asks, and to Maria’s surprise, she doesn’t.

*

“Good news,” Maria says, depositing the leaking bag of Chinese takeout onto Barton’s counter, “I don’t have HIV.”

Barton, sitting shirtless and fletching an arrow, could tell her to get out. He’s never so much as mentioned that he lives in Bed-Stuy, and home addresses aren’t exactly listed in the personnel files of Level 6 agents. But then, he’d shown up at her place first. “Generally speaking, yeah, that is good news,” he says, rising from the couch. He scratches his chin. “Can I ask how you found me?”

“Divorce decree,” she says, tearing off a paper towel to wipe down the container of egg drop soup. “You were still married to Morse in 2007?”

Barton shuffles over, jean-clad and barefoot, to pilfer an egg roll. “I mean, we legally separated after I got back from Kosovo,” he says, which seems like a quaint way to describe his 14-month stint in a Serbian prison in the late ’90s. “We just didn’t get around to filing the paperwork.”

“Let me guess,” says Maria, “that changed when she wanted to marry Hunter?” She watches Barton cross and uncross his arms. He seems embarrassed to be shirtless, though Maria can’t imagine why. He’s got a nice chest.

“Something like that,” he mutters. He jerks a thumb over his shoulder in what Maria assumes is the direction of his bedroom. “Uh, let me grab a shirt, and we can celebrate your good news. I’m pretty sure I have a bottle of champagne somewhere.”

Maria arches an eyebrow. “You keep champagne on hand?” she asks, licking Szechuan sauce off her finger. She glances up just in time to see Barton twist around. Maria can’t help but gasp. Deep scars criss-cross his muscular shoulder blades. “Oh my God.”

“Hence the shirt,” Barton says, reaching back to massage his neck. His smile is forced.

“You don’t have to,” Maria blurts. “Put on a shirt for my sake, I mean. I’m not – it doesn’t make me uncomfortable.”

“Yeah? It does me.” He disappears into his bedroom and emerges a minute later, yanking on the hem of a purple t-shirt.

“I’m sorry,” Maria says, even though she knows it doesn’t really make it OK, “but I have to ask.”

Barton runs his thumb over the seam of his mouth. “C’mon, Maria. You know this story.”

She does. She’d actually been sitting in a debrief with Morse when news broke that S.H.I.E.L.D. lost an entire team in Belgrade. Maria remembers Morse quietly hyperventilating – she wasn’t supposed to know her husband was on the mission, strictly speaking – while the other recruits speculated wildly about what went wrong. Of course, Barton hadn’t been killed in action. He’d been freed by NATO forces after the war without S.H.I.E.L.D. having looked a day for him.

“How?” Maria wants to know. “How could you keep working for S.H.I.E.L.D. after that?”

“Not exactly a lot of jobs out there for someone with my skillset,” Barton says gruffly. Which, while true, isn’t the truth.

Maria calls him on it. “Bullshit.”

“You didn’t quit,” he points out. “You’re going to tell me that’s different, aren’t you?”

“It _is_ different,” Maria insists. “Colombia didn’t end my marriage.”

Barton takes a step toward her. “My marriage,” he murmurs, hand sliding over her hip, “would have ended regardless.”

His lips are surprisingly soft, his tongue sweeping in her mouth like it’s their hundredth kiss, not their first. If Maria’s being honest with herself, this was always the plan, from the moment she boarded the C train to Bed-Stuy. She’d ordered the No. 6 special, orange chicken with fried rice, from the hole-in-the-wall Chinese restaurant downstairs and climbed the four flights of steps to Barton’s apartment knowing he’d fuck her and be nice about it. He might’ve initiated the kiss, but Maria’s definitely driving. She steers him toward the couch, the backs of his knees hitting the upholstery. She pushes him down. Her hands slip beneath his t-shirt as she climbs into his lap.

“Sure,” he says lazily, and it’s all the encouragement Maria needs to tug his shirt off. She’s not brave enough to trace the scars on his back, but she slides her knuckles appreciatively over his toned abs. He drops his head to suckle her neck, nipping her collarbone. Maria inhales sharply. Barton immediately pulls back. “Sorry, sorry.”

But her gasp had been one of pleasure. “Do it again,” Maria orders.

Barton grins. “Yes, ma’am.” She helps him unbutton her blouse, and he peppers the top of her breasts with kisses. “Can I?” he breathes, nosing at her lacy bra.

For the first time all night, Maria hesitates. But if anyone will understand the scars on her breasts, it’s Barton. She nods. So does he. He lowers his mouth without removing her bra, pale eyes checking in with her as he laves her nipple through the lace. Maria hums. It’s a decent compromise. She grinds down experimentally. He groans, already half-hard. Emboldened, her fingers curl under the waistband of his jeans.

“Do you want to move to the bedroom?” he asks.

 _Say yes,_ Maria tells herself. Because she knows what Barton will say if she thinks about it too long. There’s a part of her that wants to settle this, to have sex with him, to take back what the rebels took from her. But the truth is, as much as she’s come to trust him, she still has to think about it. Because the tentative friendship she’s struck with Barton might not survive a move into the bedroom if things don’t go according to plan.

Barton’s already reaching for his shirt. “You’re not supposed to have to talk yourself into it,” he says gently, offering her his hand. “C’mon, Chang’s orange chicken is actually better once the sauce congeals a bit.”

Maria’s nose wrinkles.

“What would you have done if I’d said yes?” she asks after they’ve eaten, chasing a grain of rice with her chopsticks.

Barton stops trying to rearrange the jigsaw puzzle of leftovers that is his fridge. “Well,” he says, wiping his hands on his jeans, “we would have had sex. I’d like to think I would’ve made it good for you.”

“And what would you have gotten out of it?”

Barton chuckles. “Because having sex with a beautiful woman would’ve been _such_ a hardship, let me tell you.”

Only Maria doesn’t feel beautiful when she looks in the mirror and sees scars that weren’t there six months ago. “Can I ask you a personal question?”

He pulls two beers from the fridge and offers her one. It’s not champagne, but it’ll do. “Seeing as you’ve already brought up my ex once tonight, I’ll cop to being a little frightened.”

“It’s not about Agent Morse,” Maria says quickly. “Or what happened in Kosovo.”

“OK.”

She takes a deep breath. “When you were stitching me up in Damascus, you mentioned ... you said you did what you had to, to get by. You meant ... ” she trails off uncertainly.

“Sex work,” Barton supplies. He says this matter-of-factly, like it’s not an unusual thing to have had sex for money. Then again, in the world he grew up in, it probably wasn’t. He takes a swig of beer. “Go on.”

“When you were ... ”

“Hooking? Turning tricks? Working as a prostitute?” He sets the bottle of Coors Light down and leans his elbows on the counter. “You can say it, Maria. You’re not going to hurt me. I made my peace with it a long time ago.”

Maria wants to know how he did it, wants to know if she’ll ever be able to. “Did it ruin sex for you?” She immediately ducks her head, plays with the condensation on her beer.

“No,” says Barton, shaking his head. “That’s not to say it couldn’t’ve. After Coulson plucked me off the streets, I didn’t have sex for months. Didn’t want to. I didn’t even jerk off, though that might’ve been because he was letting me crash in his spare room and the walls were pretty thin.” He flashes her a wry smile. “Some things came back faster than others. To this day, there’s stuff I won’t do because it reminds me of a bad trick, and I’ve had to turn down assignments because someone who didn’t bother to read my file assumed a man who kills for a living would be comfortable with everything. But no, it didn’t ruin sex for me. Does that answer your question?”

Maria slowly nods. “One more question?” she asks.

“Anything,” Barton says without hesitation.

“Are you – ” her voice catches “ – are you disappointed we aren’t having sex right now?”

“No,” he says immediately. “Not at all.”

“But you would’ve had sex with me.”

“Sure, had you wanted to. But you changed your mind, and that’s allowed.” Barton shrugs. “If you want to try again some day, I could be down. Honestly, though? I’m not sure you’re ready for that.”

Maria stares at him, incredulous. “That’s it? You’re just going to let it go? Because I really think you should call me out. I show up unannounced, without any regard for your – ” her jaw snaps shut. “I’ll go. I’m sorry I interrupted your evening. I – ”

“Or you could stay,” Barton interrupts. He rubs his neck. “I mean, if you don’t want to go back to Manhattan tonight, you’re welcome to crash here.”

She’s instantly suspicious. “This isn’t about that stabbing on the 2 train last weekend, is it?” she demands. “Because I may not have passed my re-cert yet, Barton, but I assure you, I could still take down a mugger.”

“Think of the paperwork, Maria.” He wiggles his eyebrows, and he’s won. “C’mon,” he says, “I’ll get you something to change into.”

His bedroom is unusually neat, and Maria has to wonder if that’s because he’s never there or if it’s because he’s not the person she always assumed he was. He hands her boxers and a worn S.H.I.E.L.D. t-shirt, which she changes into in his bathroom. There are signs of a woman having been there recently – two toothbrushes, salon-brand shampoo – but not too recently, judging by the rust on the pink-handled razor. She wonders idly if he’s given Romanoff a key. It seems like something this Barton would do, trust the Black Widow with unfettered access to his apartment.

“You can take the bed,” Barton offers, and she can feel his sharp eyes sweep over her thigh, surveying his handiwork. It’s healed nicely, or as nicely as a gaping stab wound stitched up in the field can.

“You did a good job,” Maria tells him, “and you don’t have to sleep in the living room.” She means it, but she doubts he’ll take her up on the offer.

So she’s surprised when he pulls the covers back and says, “Oh thank God. The couch is killer on my back.”

They both crawl into bed, careful to stick to their respective sides. The minutes tick by. Then, the mattress dips suddenly, and he rolls toward her. Maria’s entire body tenses under the weight of Barton’s arm. She holds her breath until he laces his fingers with hers and presses a kiss to her shoulder, and she’s able to relax a little. “You’re going to be OK, Maria,” he mumbles sleepily.

She hadn’t believed him in Damascus. But she’s starting to.

*

“So what’s the deal with you and Romanoff?” Maria asks over lunch at one of the trendy burger joints that have been popping up all over Lower Manhattan and waits for Barton to choke on an overpriced French fry.

Only he doesn’t choke. Barton chews thoughtfully, wiping his greasy fingers on the checkered tablecloth before replying, “What d’you mean, what’s the deal with me and Romanoff?”

Maria wants information, so she lets him steal one of her sweet potato tots. “C’mon,” she says as he smears it through the fancy ketchup trio she’d ordered, “like you two fucking isn’t the worst-kept secret at S.H.I.E.L.D.” She watches him pop the tater tot into his mouth and immediately spit it back out.

“What the hell is that?” he demands, gulping from her water glass.

“The ketchup?” Maria squints at the three red-orange dabs, trying to remember what the waiter had said. “It’s blood orange-habanero. Now answer the question.”

Barton glares at the busboy like it’s his fault the restaurant doesn’t have Heinz 57. “You said it yourself,” he says when their plates have been cleared, “everyone knows I’m sleeping with her.”

Maria crosses her arms. “But not exclusively,” she points out, “because you would’ve had sex with me.”

Barton plucks a discarded straw wrapper off the table, smoothing it between his fingers. “You’re still on that?” he says wearily.

Maria stares at him, realization slowly dawning. “Oh my God,” she blurts. “You’re totally in love with her.”

“Say it a little louder,” Barton grumbles, shoulders slumping as his pale eyes nervously scan the restaurant for eavesdroppers, “I don’t think the people in the back heard you.”

But he doesn’t deny it. Maria’s going to need a minute. “OK,” she says, still processing, “like, so, how – ”

“Long?” Barton interjects. “I think I’ve always been a little in love with her.” He exhales slowly. “It only took her nearly bleeding out in my arms for me to wise up to the fact.”

“Interesting,” says Maria, though he hasn’t answered the question she was planning to ask. “I’ll admit I’m more curious about how that, you know, works.”

Barton arches an eyebrow. “How what works? Being with another agent?” Maria nods. “Wow. I think you might be the only S.H.I.E.L.D. agent to have never broken the anti-fraternization rule. Not even once?”

“You would’ve been the first,” Maria says dryly. She watches Barton stretch his arms, somehow managing to avoid clobbering the woman seated at the table behind them. The waiter drops off the check, but neither of them reaches for it. “I don’t think you were entirely honest when I asked what you’d get out of sleeping with me.” _I think you were hoping you could move on, too._

Barton rubs his mouth. “Should I apologize?”

Maria considers it. “No,” she says finally, “but you should buy me lunch.”

*

She leaves Barton in the East Village, cutting south on Second Avenue toward the S.H.I.E.L.D. practice gym while he heads off in the entirely wrong direction to be headed back to Brooklyn. Maria dodges bike messengers and early spring tourists, who never can quite grasp the flow of traffic on Houston Street.

“You’re late,” says Hartley, even though Maria had walked through the door at a quarter til and changed in the locker room with time to spare. “You should’ve been warming up an hour ago.”

She isn’t wrong. The $18 burger sits in Maria’s stomach like a brick, and she moves sluggishly.  “I’ll stay after,” she grits when Hartley lands the first punch.

“Or you could make this workout count,” Hartley suggests as she sweeps Maria’s feet out from under her.

Maria resolves to do better. She picks herself up off the mat and tries to anticipate Hartley’s next move. She isn’t quite fast enough, and Hartley lands her roundhouse kick. “Oomph,” says Maria,  clutching her side.

“But you saw it coming,” Hartley points out. “Now defend against it.”

So Maria does, in the form of a poorly-executed spinning hook kick. “Sorry, sorry,” she pants, “I know that was sloppy.” If Hand had seen that, she’d be throwing a fit.

But all Hartley does is tell Maria to do it again. “Better,” she says approvingly. “This time I want you to surprise me.”

Which, of course, is easier said than done. Maria doubts she’s landing even one punch for every two Hartley gets in. Again and again, Maria goes down. Again and again, she picks herself up.

Until at last Hartley orders her to stand down. “That’s enough, Hill,” she barks.

Maria shakes her head. “I can keep going,” she gasps, out of breath, “I can – ” That’s when she notices they’ve attracted a small crowd.

“Don’t you boys have anything better to do?” Hartley snaps, and she waits for the onlookers – all male – to disperse. Then she tells Maria, “We’re done here, Hill. I was willing to take you on as a personal favor to Victoria. But if you won’t accept your body’s limitations, there isn’t all that much I can do for you.”

And she stalks off toward the women’s locker room, forcing Maria to follow on shaky legs. “Hand asked you to help me? Why?”

Hartley snorts. “Isn’t it obvious?” she asks, now aggressively pawing through her gym bag. “She wants her best agent back out in the field.”

Maria blinks. “I’m not – ”

“Bullshit.” Hartley’s nostrils flare. “You are, and you know it.”

If Barton and Romanoff aren’t the worst-kept secret at S.H.I.E.L.D., it’s only because Hand and Hartley have been there longer. Maria bites her lip. As uncomfortable as it makes her to imagine her S.O. bringing up Bogotá at the dinner table, the clock is ticking for Maria to pass her re-cert. She needs Hartley. “I have to push myself,” she insists, “or they won’t take me seriously.”

“Maria, they already don’t take you seriously.” Hartley sighs. “Take a look around. How many female agents do you see?” Maria’s eyes sweep the locker room, but it’s as empty as it always is. “I get it. You’re used to working twice as hard for half the respect. You want to get back out there so you can prove them wrong? You’ll fail. Because in their eyes, we always do. And you know what? Fuck ’em. I’m done pretending this job isn’t harder on us. I’ve been where you are. Any female agent who says she hasn’t is either lying or works in accounts payable. Happens so often it has its own section in the S.H.I.E.L.D. handbook. You didn’t ask for my advice, but you’re going to get it. Take the time _you_ need to heal. That’s all you can do. That’s all anyone can do.”

Not sure what to say to that, Maria stammers, “I-I’m going to shower.” She’s not sure what else there is _to_ say.

Hartley nods. The jerk of her chin tells Maria that’s pretty much the response she was expecting. “Take the rest of the week off, Hill,” she says firmly. “I’ll see you Monday.”

Maria turns the shower on full blast, until the spray’s so sharp it stings. _Of course you’re not the only one,_ she thinks numbly. _Did you really think you were?_

She takes a cab home.

*

Maria’s light duty assignment is Asset Management and Risk Evaluation, which is S.H.I.E.L.D. for “putting together black ops missions in such a way that none of your colleagues get killed.” She’s pettily trying to decide if Rumlow’s team gets an extraction plan when someone taps her on the shoulder.

“Seriously?” Maria demands when she sees she’s just pulled a gun on Carter, Sharon, better known as Agent 13. Maria thinks she might prefer to go by a number, too, if she were related to the famous former S.H.I.E.L.D. director. “Didn’t anyone ever tell you it’s a bad idea to sneak up on a Level 6 agent?” she complains, holstering her Glock.

Carter’s tone is no-nonsense. “The situation in Karachi.” She pauses. “It’s devolved.”

“OK,” Maria says calmly. She knows S.T.R.I.K.E. Team Delta missed an earlier check-in with Coulson, but she also knows Barton has a well-documented history of turning his comms off accidentally-on-purpose.

“Follow me,” says Carter.

She leads Maria through the S.H.I.E.L.D. cubicle farm to a small conference room where seven agents are shouting at once. One of several televisions is tuned to Al Jazeera. A ticker-tape at the bottom of the screen reports 40 people are dead and dozens more wounded after a suicide bombing at a political rally in northwest Pakistan.

“We’re also hearing there might have been an attack on the U.S. consulate in Peshawar,” Carter says hesitantly.

“And Barton and Romanoff haven’t made contact?” Carter shakes her head. “Coulson? Where’s he?”

“Kabul. Bagram Airfield.”

“Is he willing to take in a team?”

“If S.H.I.E.L.D. is willing to send one.”

“Where’s Fury?”

There’s a beat before Carter admits, “Out of pocket.”

 _Convenient._ “And the World Security Council?” Maria asks, though she’s pretty sure that’s who Hand is arguing with on the phone.

“No, no, no,” Maria’s S.O. is saying, “it would be unprecedented for S.H.I.E.L.D to go in ... yes, I know she’s the Black Widow, that’s what I’ve been trying to tell – who, Barton? No, he’s nobody. Completely expendable.”

At least Carter has the sense to look guilty when she says, “They’re ready to cut their losses.”

Maria’s stomach knots. She stares at the map of Pakistan, at the blinking red dot over Karachi where S.T.R.I.K.E. Team Delta fell off the grid. “Why bother bringing me in?”

“Because.” Carter bites her lip. “Everyone else has forgotten what it’s like to be on the other side of a call.”

Unfortunately for Maria, that’s when Hand notices her subordinate is in the room. “Hill, who gave you permission to – ”

But Maria isn’t listening. The dot over Karachi blinks green. She lunges for the nearest headset, overturning a mug in the process. “S.T.R.I.K.E. Team Delta, do you copy?” No answer. “I repeat, this is Agent Hill. S.T.R.I.K.E. Team, do you copy?”

Coffee drips from the table. Silence.

Then, a crackle. “This is Agent Romanoff,” comes the tinny response from the other side of the world. “Requesting medevac.” Her voice quivers. “Hawkeye is down.”

*

Maria arrives just in time to hear Romanoff shout furiously, “This is all your fault!” A second later, the doors to the med bay swing open, and the Black Widow storms out, still wearing her tac suit, the sleeves streaked with blood. Maria sees Coulson and walks briskly toward him.

“How is he?” she asks. She would’ve been there sooner if not for Hand, who kept yelling even after the quinjet carrying Delta Team landed at the Triskelion.

Coulson shakes his head. “GSW to the upper right back,” he mutters, “heavy pulsatile bleeding, no exit – ” he breaks off. “They’re prepping him for surgery.”

“Hemopneumothorax?” Maria guesses. Coulson nods. “Why didn’t they take him to Landstuhl?”

Coulson shrugs helplessly. “I don’t know.”

“Who shot him?”

“I don’t know.”

“OK,” says Maria, her patience starting to wear thin, “what do you – ”

 _“I don’t know,”_ Coulson snaps. He rubs his mouth. “My apologies, Agent Hill. That was uncalled for.”

Usually he’s so unflappable. Maria’s not sure she’s ever heard him raise his voice before. “Why don’t you have a seat, Agent Coulson?” she suggests.

They sit in silence until Coulson says, “He was just a skinny kid with good aim when I recruited him. Didn’t have a whole lot of options. You have to wonder, was this really what he was meant to do with his life? If he had it to do over, would he make the same – ”

“Yes,” Maria interrupts. She swallows and stares straight ahead. “I believe he would, sir.”

Barton pulls through, just barely.

*

“You’re an idiot,” Maria says matter-of-factly when Barton comes to three days later. His mouth twists into a grimace, and just in case, she reminds him, “S.H.I.E.L.D. med bay. You got shot in Pakistan, remember?”

“I remember,” Barton rasps.

“Yeah, well,” says Maria, “you didn’t yesterday. You almost ripped out your chest tube. Do you remember that?”

“Nat might’ve mentioned it, yeah.” He coughs. It sounds painful. “Sorry you had to see it.” His eyes flutter closed. Maria slides out of the chair and fluffs his pillow for him.

“Better?” she asks, sitting back down.

“Much.”

Maria draws her knees to her chest. “How are you feeling?”

“Like I got shot,” he says, and he coughs again, his back arching off the mattress. He shakes his head when she reaches for the call button. “Nah, don’t bother.”

“I’ve never been shot,” Maria confesses.

“Yeah, well, I don’t recommend it. Though – ” there’s a click as the pump administers another dose of fentanyl “ – I’m not entirely sure how that’s possible.”

Maria bristles because it’s not like she hasn’t done her fair share of staring at the med bay walls. “It’s not like I haven’t been shot _at.”_

“Yeah, yeah,” Barton grumbles, “brag about it, why don’t you?” He groans. “Hey, uh, I’m about to get pretty loopy. But Nat told me what you did, and I wanted to thank you.”

Maria snorts. “I’m pretty sure any reasonable person sitting here would’ve stopped you yanking out your chest tube, Barton.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about, and you know it.”

“Oh,” says Maria flatly. She wishes he’d fall asleep already. “That was nothing.”

“No, no,” he insists. “You went to bat for me. You didn’t let me die over there, Maria.” He gropes for her hand. “That’s not nothing.”

Maria looks at their threaded fingers, and she nods.

*

Maria takes the stairs to Barton’s two at a time, takeout sack from Chang’s twisting around her fingers. It’s only when she pauses on the third floor landing to catch her breath that she realizes she’s dribbled hot and sour soup everywhere. _“Damn,”_ she swears, squinting at the threadbare carpet where the stain disappears into the pattern. Maria wipes her hands on her jeans.

Voices drift down from Apartment H. “Clint, I swear, if you get up again, I’m going to tie you down.”

“Is that a promise?”

There’s an audible groan. “You would like that, wouldn’t you?”

“What can I say? I’m a dirty bastard.” Barton chuckles. “No, no, I’m holding you to it. Soon as I’m – Tasha? Where’re you  – ”

 _“Stay there,”_ Romanoff hisses, and a second later, she hauls the door open. Standing there in a too-big sweatshirt of Barton’s, she doesn’t look like S.H.I.E.L.D.’s deadliest assassin. “I thought – ” she breaks off, shaking her head as she pulls the door shut behind her. “He checked himself out,” she says flatly.

Maria already knows this, of course. Not that she would have come to Brooklyn had she known the Black Widow was there. “That’s why I brought dinner.”

Romanoff tucks a loose curl behind her ear, tugging Barton’s hoodie more tightly around her thin frame. “He’s not really up for visitors.”

“Oh?” Maria arches an eyebrow. _Then what are you doing here?_

It’s only after Romanoff shrugs and says, “I guess I thought he’d need someone to take care of him,” that Maria realizes she actually said the last part out loud. She watches Romanoff bite her lip. “But I can go, if you think you – ”

“No,” Maria interrupts. Because this isn’t the Black Widow. It isn’t even Agent Romanoff. No, this is the woman Barton affectionately calls “Nat,” who’d tried to hide her red-rimmed eyes in the med bay. Maria feels like she’s seeing the other spy for the first time. She presses the sack from Chang’s into Romanoff’s hands. “Here.”

Natasha blinks. “I’ll tell him you stopped by.”

*

“Sloppy,” says Hand as she plays back tape of Maria sparring with Hartley. “See there? You’re favoring your right side again.” She snorts. “Please, Sitwell could’ve blocked that.”

A decade ago, when S.H.I.E.L.D. first recruited her out of West Point, a comment like that would have had Maria jumping in to defend herself. It had taken her years to learn she was better off taking Hand’s critiques in silence. If Hand wants an opinion, she’ll ask for it.

So Maria sits, straight-backed, hands folded in her lap, and lets her S.O. berate her. She’d worn a new suit for the occasion, the collar stiff and scratchy, but she doesn’t dare itch. Hand rewinds the tape when Hartley goes down. She _tsks_ over Maria’s poor form, clucks her tongue whenever her protégée swings and misses. Finally, Hand pulls off her glasses. “Well, what do you have to say for yourself?”

“I’m ready to be put back in the field,” Maria says impassively, like she hasn’t been practicing in front of the bathroom mirror all week.

Hand bites down on the earpiece, twisting the chunky frames between her thumb and forefinger. “Very well,” she says, setting her glasses back on her nose. She pages through Maria’s re-cert paperwork, signing here and initialing there, before tidying the stack of documents and pushing them across the desk with a tight-lipped smile. “You seem surprised, Agent Hill.”

“Not surprised,” Maria says quickly, though she is. She’d come prepared for a fight. She clears her throat, unsure if she should thank Hand for not making it one.

“Oh,” says Hand, so casually it could almost be an afterthought, “before you file those with legal, the director wants to see you.”

*

Barton pulls a glass from the cupboard, fills it with water, dumps it out, reaches for a sponge, gives it a half-hearted scrub before refilling it. He does all of this one-handed because his arm is still in a sling and slides the glass down the counter to Maria.

“Drink,” he tells her, and he goes back to cleaning his kitchen.

Maria, not all that interested in sobering up, watches Barton throw away a styrofoam container – _dinner for one_ – and wipe down the counter. “No Romanoff,” she observes, hiccuping.

Barton stops cleaning long enough to glare at Maria. She takes a begrudging sip of water. “Nat left for Malibu three days ago.”

“What’s in Malibu?” Maria wants to know. She squints. She’s not sure if it’s a trick of the light or if his blue eyes really are flashing in anger. Just how drunk is she?

“I don’t know, Maria,” Barton says, tilting his chin up. For the first time, she notices how dark the circles beneath his eyes are. “Maybe if you’d taken the damn job, you could tell me.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Maria retorts, “was keeping track of your girlfriend supposed to top of my list of career goals? Because it’s not my fault Romanoff took – ”

The dishrag smacks against the countertop. “Stop trying to make this about Nat. It’s not about her.” Barton plucks up the towel and begins coiling it tightly around his hand.

“But you’re angry,” Maria points out. “Why?”

Barton snorts. “Why am I angry? I wasn’t expecting to have to explain it to you of all people.”

Maria shakes her head. She isn’t following. Maybe she has had too much to drink.

“Could it be the hole in my chest? The fact that my partner’s been reassigned because I can’t lift my bow? All I am to S.H.I.E.L.D. is my deadly aim. I’m right where you were, Maria. Only there’s no desk job for me if I don’t recover.”

It’s not that Maria doesn’t feel for Barton. She doesn’t imagine there are a lot of jobs out there for an assassin with an eighth grade education. But at the same time, she didn’t bust her butt to sit around the Triskelion taking orders from Fury, which is what she tells Barton. “I passed my re-cert,” she says stubbornly.

“Good for you,” Barton bites, “because I may not pass mine.”

“I’m sure they’ll find something for – ”

“No, Maria. They won’t. They’ll thank me for my service and show me the door. Isn’t that what you’ve said all along? That we’re all just expendable? Because you could’ve made sure there was still a place for me at S.H.I.E.L.D. Instead, you turned down Fury’s offer – to prove what? That Colombia didn’t change you?”

Maria bristles. “That’s not why I turned it down,” she insists.

“No?” Barton challenges. “Then why’d you show up here falling down drunk?”

He has a point. Maria drops her head to her hands. “How do I fix this?” she mumbles.

Barton pushes the water glass toward her. “Drink,” he urges.

*

“Agent Hill,” says Fury, fingertips skimming the edge of his desk, “I didn’t think you’d be back.” He rolls out his chair and gives her a pointed look before taking a seat. “Since you made it quite clear why you were turning the job down.”

Maria waits what she hopes is an appropriate number of seconds before admitting, “Honestly, sir, I didn’t think I would be, either.”

Fury laces his fingers together. “Can I ask what changed your mind?”

Maria isn’t entirely sure she has, but she’s not about to tell the director of S.H.I.E.L.D. this meeting is a waste of his time. “I’m not sure I asked the right questions yesterday.”

“And why’s that?”

“Because,” says Maria, lifting her chin. “I’m still not sure why you’re promoting me. Sir.”

Fury’s eyebrow shoots up. “Are you questioning my judgment, Agent Hill?”

Her palms are starting to sweat. “Just trying to make sure I have all the information.”

“Then this might not be the job for you after all,” says Fury, leaning forward on his elbows, “as I find S.H.I.E.L.D. tends to runs best when no one has all the information.”

“Except you,” Maria points out.

“Except me,” Fury agrees, lips curling around the words.

Maria inhales. “Sir, if you don’t mind me asking – ”

“Would it stop you if I did?”

“ – did Bogotá factor into your decision?”

And she holds her breath, fully expecting to be thrown from the director’s office.

But all Fury does is sigh wearily. “I thought we went over this, Hill,” he says, pinching his temples. “You’re smart, you’re capable, you came to us highly recommended. In fact, if I recall, Lt. Gen. Christman pitched a fit when we stole you from the Army. See? S.H.I.E.L.D. saw your potential, even then.”

“So what happened in Colombia ... had nothing to do with it?” Now Maria feels stupid turning down the promotion. She watches Fury rise from his chair.

“I wouldn’t say that,” he says, settling opposite her on the edge of the desk. His hand rests on his knee. “Look, Hill, I get it. I really do. You feel like you failed in Bogotá. Maybe you did. We all have bad days, Agent Hill. Granted, yours was worse than most. But you should try looking at it from my perspective. You didn’t spill state secrets. You didn’t jeopardize any active missions or compromise your fellow agents. Hell, you didn’t even die. You did everything I’d expect a highly-trained S.H.I.E.L.D. agent to do and – don’t even think about interrupting, Hill, I’m not finished – ” Maria’s jaw snaps shut “ – and then some. In fact, if more of my agents conducted themselves like you, I might start trusting people again.”

Maria swallows the lump in her throat. “Are you finished, sir?” she asks.

“I am now.” Fury’s eye flickers to the door. “Go ahead, walk through it,” he tells her. “But this offer won’t be on the table again.”

“And if I turn down the job?”

“Then don’t come crying to me when you don’t like the decisions being made above your pay grade.” The director pushes off from his knee. “The choice is yours, Agent Hill. What’ll it be?”

He sticks out his hand.

“I want a comprehensive review of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s policies around asset management,” Maria blurts.

Fury nods. “We can do that.”

“Because agents deserve to know if they’re going in without an extraction plan,” she continues. “And sir, are you aware S.H.I.E.L.D. owns or maintains some 326 residences worldwide for use as safe houses? Some of which haven’t been inspected in – ”

“Yes or no, Hill.”

Impulsively, Maria takes the director’s hand. “OK,” she says as they shake, “OK, but I want – ”

“Delegate it,” Fury interrupts, “because this takes priority.” He lets go of her hand and circles his desk, opening one of the drawers. A file lands in front of Maria. Beneath the S.H.I.E.L.D. logo are the words “AVENGERS INITIATIVE” in bold, block letters. She snatches it, brow furrowing as she quickly skims the contents. Fury strides over to the wall of windows, gazing out over the Potomac.

“Sir?” she says questioningly. “I’m not – I’m not entirely sure what I’m looking at, to be honest.”

“That,” says Fury, “would be my plan to make us all a little safer. Anything else?”

Maria should’ve known she’d leave the director’s office with more questions than answers. She stands. “No, sir.”

Fury returns his attention to the river. “Then you’re dismissed, Deputy Director.”

**Author's Note:**

> Again, this is a fic about the shit S.H.I.E.L.D. agents (especially the female ones) must deal with. As such, it includes:
> 
> – references to the rape, torture and confinement of a female character  
> – male dismissal of rape trauma  
> – mention of medical procedures  
> – canon-typical violence  
> – blood and gore  
> – global terrorism  
> – a male character discussing past sex work  
> – flashbacks/PTSD  
> – workplace sexism  
> – conversations about consent
> 
> It's not a happy fic, but it's one I felt compelled to write. Ever since I read "a gift like joy" by the incredible [shellybelle](http://archiveofourown.org/users/shellybelle/pseuds/shellybelle), I've been haunted by the idea that sexual assault happens so frequently in the field that S.H.I.E.L.D. has a manual on how to handle it. For female agents, capture has to be a special kind of hell.
> 
> As always, my endless gratitude to [frommybookbook](http://frommybookbook.tumblr.com/) and [lazaefair](http://archiveofourown.org/users/lazaefair/pseuds/lazaefair).


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